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Tag Archives: Risky Regencies

I was supposed to put up a new post today, March 2 (I’m the “First Fridays” Risky) but I just couldn’t get one written. I’m facing a medical procedure next week that has me a bit nervous, and I am scrambling to arrange my over-busy life so I can be laid-up for 6 days for the recovery time –which my doctor only mentioned to me on Wednesday! (I work in a one-person office for my day job….) Meanwhile, we haven’t been seeing many comments or indications that our faithful readers are still reading our posts, and we have been discussing making some changes –possibly doing more with our Facebook page and changing what we do here. Maybe this blog needs a medical procedure, too? Mine is supposed to help my blocked circulation, and I can see kind of a parallel here….

If you are here, reading the blog, do you have any thoughts to share with us about changes we might make? If we start posting more short bits on Facebook, would you follow us over there? Or if you aren’t on Facebook, would we be leaving you out? I guess I am wondering, would you miss us?

We’ll certainly keep everyone posted about whatever changes we decide to make. My apologies for not posting an actual article today!!

I hope you’ll cross your fingers for me if you read this post by Saturday evening. My exciting news is that LORD OF MISRULE, my new release from last December, is a finalist for a prestigious 2019 Maggie Award as Best Historical Romance! And Saturday night is when the winners are going to be announced.

I was flabbergasted when I made the finals, but it is so thrilling that my first new book after a 16-year pause in my career has been so well-received. The other thing that makes this honor especially exciting to me is that I write “sweet”, and not only was this book competing with Historical Romances of all sorts of time periods, but it was also up against much hotter reads, which tend to be more popular.

I had the fun exercise of drafting what I’m calling my “fantasy thank you speech” which a friend at the Moonlight and Magnolias Conference in Georgia this weekend will deliver for me in the (rather unlikely) event that my book wins. But in that speech I mentioned that, ” Even though we are all writing about the emotional journeys our characters must take to arrive at deep and lasting love, omitting the explicit sex can make it harder to show the dance of attraction and doubt they go through.”

Thinking about “sweet” versus “hot” has made me think about all the kinds of risks we authors take as we try to do service to our characters’ stories. I tend to write unusual plots, and try to bring something fresh and different to each Regency story I write. Not all readers want that, of course! So it’s often a risk –and that tendency may be how I ended up here in the Risky Regencies sisterhood. Maybe over the coming months, each of us blogging here can talk about what she thinks is “risky” about the writing she does. I admit that I’ve been in a very “ruminative” mood lately, taking stock of where I am and where I’m going now that I am writing again.

What am I working on? Readers wanted more stories from Little Macclow, the Derbyshire village setting of LOM. I hadn’t planned on a series, but it turns out there is enough material there to mine. My current work-in-progress is a prequel to LOM, which I hope to release before or at least by December! It’s the story of Tom & Sally Hepston, who are already married when you meet them in LOM. Is it risky to write a series that wasn’t planned in advance? I guess we’ll find out!!

Do you read both sweet and hot romances? Do you like offbeat stories? What kind of risks do you see authors take, and which ones do you enjoy, or not enjoy?


Do you find mid-January kind of bleak? The holidays are over, and I always feel a bit of a let-down. Putting away the decorations and what-have-you isn’t as fun as getting them out. Even the leftovers are usually all eaten up by now. (This year ours aren’t, yet, but that’s a different story.) As Charlie Brown might say, “Bleh.” But there are some good book deals out there this month, plus we’re not far from February now, the biggest month of the year for romance!

If you are looking for something new to read and you don’t mind reading “sweet” historicals, then check out this group of romances on special offer until January 20. You can find them here.

I think many of us here at the Riskies are on deadlines or involved in major projects presently. We are also, as we have been for the past year, pondering the future of this blog. Readership has definitely fallen off, but several of the regular Riskies have not been able to post this year and the rest of us haven’t been able to fill in with extra posts, for the most part. So there have been fewer posts to offer. Is that the reason for the fall-off, or is it just that blogs are less popular now than they used to be, before Twitter, Instagram, and so much else came along? I would guess it’s both….

At any rate, we are still here for now, and even if we decide to discontinue the blog at some point later this year, we don’t want the fabulous archive of all the past posts to disappear. We will certainly keep you posted if we decide to make changes.

In the meantime, happy mid-January, and happy reading! This is the very BEST time of year to curl up with a good story, the best antidote to the blah’s that I know of. What’s your favorite way to deal with mid-winter? Are you still here reading the blog?

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